SOCIALISM OF THE CHAIR.
It is generally known that Bismarck has been endeavoring to introduce
new economic measures and institutions of a more or less socialistic
nature in Germany. One of these projects has been described in an earlier
chapter. It is not, however, an equally familiar fact that he may be
regarded as a member of an economic school. Such is, nevertheless, the
case. In the earlier part of his career as imperial chancellor Bismarck
accepted the doctrines of English political economy in modified form, as
taught by the National Liberals of the Reichstag. But he professes that
he received their teachings only as a makeshift, until he should find
time to study political economy and investigate economic problems for
himself. This he did some eight years since. The first-fruits of his new
researches were the tariff reform of 1879. Later fruits have been the
tobacco monopoly and labor insurance bills. He repudiates the politicians
with whom he formerly worked as “representatives of a party which in
political economy advocates the right of the stronger and deserts the
weak in the struggle against the might of capital, and which refers him
to free competition, to private insurance, and I do not know what else—in
short, refusing him all help of the state.”
It is, then, a matter of more than ordinary interest to study the
principles of the economic system, whose leading advocate at present
is the favorite counsellor of the most powerful statesman of modern
times. This is the system of the so-called professorial socialists, or
socialists of the chair.
In the ordinary or vulgar signification of the term professorial
socialists are not socialists at all; in the strict sense of the word
they are. They recognize the existence of a social problem, and hold
that the co-operation of government is necessary to its solution. They
believe that man, associated with his fellows in the state, has duties
to perform which, single and alone, he is unable to fulfil. They point
to the fact that all civilized governments are, even at present, more
or less socialistic. Sanitary legislation, governmental inspection
of buildings, the legal limitation of a day’s labor, the prohibition
of work on Sunday, the regulations respecting the labor of women and
children, temperance laws, state control and management of railroads,
the post-office, and other like arrangements, are socialistic in their
nature.[199] These matters are not left to individual initiative and
private competition. The state—in a certain sense, even now, the highest
and most majestic of co-operative associations—steps in and attempts to
do for the citizens what it is supposed they could not do for themselves
without the help of such a union as government represents. It is sought
to give, as it were, a divine sanction to this kind of socialism, by
calling to mind the strong socialistic tinge of the Mosaic legislation.
Of such character were the laws compelling the return of land in the year
of jubilee, of which one had been forced to dispose by reason of poverty,
the setting free of slaves at the same time, the forgiveness of debt,
and the prohibition of interest in passages like the following: “And if
thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt
relieve him.... Take thou no usury (=interest) of him or increase; but
fear thy God, that thy brother may live with thee.”[200]
The party of professorial socialists was formed ten years ago in Germany.
They received their name from an opponent, a clever newspaper writer. He
also called them “sweet-water” socialists, but the first name is their
ordinary designation, and they do not, as a rule, object to it. Some of
them have sought to give the word socialist an honorable and respected
meaning by avowing themselves unreservedly socialists on all occasions.
Others think that the prejudice against the name is so strong that they
only injure themselves thereby. They are, in the narrowest sense, all
university professors of political economy, though there is no reason why
the name should not be extended so as to include others who hold similar
views.
The scientific leader of the party is its most radical member, Adolf
Wagner, the Berlin professor. Other prominent members are Gustav
Schmoller, recently professor in Strassburg, now, likewise, professor
in Berlin, and Brentano, professor in Breslau, lately transferred, I am
told, to Strassburg. Adolf Held, the late young and talented professor
in Bonn, and later in Berlin, did not hesitate to speak of himself as a
professorial socialist. Although John Stuart Mill died before this school
of political economists became known, his views and tendencies as regards
social questions were so much in accord with theirs that he can properly
enough be ranked among them. It must be remembered that Mill placed no
limit to state activity save the general good, and declared that all the
difficulties of even communism would be but as dust in the balance if he
were called upon to choose between that system and a continuance of our
present economic life _without improvement_.
Perhaps, to-day, no professorial socialist could give a better statement
of his own aims and desires than Mill’s description of the views and
expectation of himself and his wife some thirty years ago. “While we
repudiated,” says Mill, “with the greatest energy, that tyranny of
society over the individual which most socialistic systems are supposed
to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer
be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they
who do not work shall not eat will be applied, not to paupers only, but
impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labor, instead of
depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth,
will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when
it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human
beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are
not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they
belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be how to
unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership
in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in
the benefits of combined labor.” This is, I must remark in passing, an
extreme position. The professorial socialists are not accustomed to
express themselves in favor of carrying socialism so far, and I believe
Mill does it nowhere else. “We had not the presumption,” continues
Mill, “to suppose that we could already foresee by what precise form of
institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at
how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw
clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or
desirable an equivalent change of character must take place both in the
uncultivated herd who now compose the laboring masses and in the immense
majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to
labor and combine for generous, or, at all events, for public and social
purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But
the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is
ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the
sentiments will make a common man dig or weave for his country as readily
as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a
system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in
general can be brought up to this point. But the hinderance is not in the
essential condition of human nature.” Ruskin expresses the thought that
one ought to be as ready to give money as life for one’s country when he
says: “I will tell you, good reader, what would have seemed Utopian on
the side of evil instead of good: that ever men should have come to value
their money so much more than their lives, that if you call upon them to
become soldiers, and take chance of a bullet through their heart, and of
wife and children being left desolate, for their pride’s sake, they will
do it gayly; but if you ask them, for their country’s sake, to spend a
hundred pounds without security of getting back a hundred and five, they
will laugh in your face.”[201]
The German professorial socialists held a meeting in Eisenach in October,
1872, and founded the “Union for Social Politics.” They hoped, by means
of an organization holding yearly meetings, to be able to exercise
greater influence on legislation and public opinion. Their proceedings
were published in Leipsic, in 1873, under the title “Transactions of the
Union for Social Politics,” and reports of meetings which have since been
held have been published at the same place under the same title.
They discussed such questions as joint-stock companies, insurance,
savings-banks, and factory legislation, including the prohibition of
labor on Sunday and protection of women and children in factories. Their
negative work consisted in combating the empty abstractions of the
English free-trade school, or, as they call it, the Manchester school.
They accused the Manchester men of lacking all appreciation for the
higher duties of the state or the ethical side of economic life, and of
having no warmth of heart for the interests of the lower classes. The
professorial socialists endeavored, on the other hand, to reconcile the
laborers and social democrats to society by recognizing and favoring what
might be called their just demands.
The difference between professorial socialists and other professors
of political economy in Germany is one of degree. The former emphasize
more strongly the beneficial effects of governmental intervention,
and believe that the state has not as yet gone nearly far enough in
recognizing its duties towards the weak and poor and in regulating the
distribution of wealth.[202] They regard political economy as, first and
foremost, an ethical science. To them the state is, above all things, a
moral person. It is, indeed, necessary to obtain a clear understanding
of their conception of the state before it is possible to comprehend
their teachings. They regard the state as something sacred and divine,
holding that it arises out of the essential characteristics of the human
nature given us by God. They have a reverence for state obligations which
reminds one of the doctrines of the ancient Greeks and of the heroic
self-sacrifice of Socrates, who considered it his duty to obey the laws,
even when they ordered his death. They consider that the rights of the
state spring from a higher source than a social contract, either implicit
or explicit, of the citizens with one another. The state stands above the
citizens as the Church above its members. Humanity, in their opinion,
progresses, and ever must progress, through Church and state. They see
God in both. They know nothing of any civilization in the past apart from
the state, and are able to imagine none in the future existing outside of
such a social organism. In this spirit Professor Schmoller defines the
state as the grandest moral institution for the education and development
of the human race.
The socialists of the chair deprecate any attempt to separate political
economy from the higher ideal side of our nature. They do not believe
that in business or anywhere should man be governed solely by selfish
motives.
In practical politics they reject decidedly violent change, but advocate
a gradual and peaceful development. Some of them do not expect that their
ideal will be realized for a thousand years to come.
Wagner believes that he has discovered a law according to which the
functions of government are constantly increasing—in many places, even in
spite of theory. According to him, government in all civilized countries
is uninterruptedly taking upon itself new duties. The post-office,
education, the telegraph, railroads, and the care of forests are
examples. The increase in state business in England, _e.g._, may be
seen from the fact that the expenses of government were forty times as
great in 1841 as in 1685, although the population had little more than
trebled its numbers.[203] If it can be shown that Wagner’s theory is
really a law, and that the apparent proofs of it are not merely temporary
social phenomena, it will at once be admitted that it is of the highest
importance. Its operation would, of itself, establish the socialistic
state, since, if government continually absorbs private business, there
will, in the end, be only state business. In this socialistic state
there would be the same differences in rank as at present between the
different governmental employees. At the top of the social ladder there
would still be an emperor, and at the bottom ordinary laborers, steadily
employed in the service of the state, as, _e.g._, the workmen on the
state railroads now.
At present things are moving pretty rapidly in Germany towards the
accomplishment of Wagner’s ideal, if we may suppose that expressed by
his law. In fact, since Bismarck is said to value him highly, it is
not impossible that he may have considerable to do with directing the
economic policy of Germany. He has always been a strong advocate of state
railways, the compulsory insurance of laborers by the state, and the
tobacco monopoly. What may be the ultimate results of the changes taking
place in Germany it is far too early to say.
The leading ideas of the professorial socialists may be best learned from
a little work by Professor Gustav Schmoller, entitled “A Few Fundamental
Principles of Law and Political Economy.”[204] It is an open letter,
addressed to Professor von Treitschke, a Prussian of the Buncombe type,
who, with a very insufficient study of their writings, had the rashness
to attack the professorial socialists in his “Socialism and Those Who
Favor It” (“Der Socialismus und seine Gönner”). Von Treitschke is
generally regarded as having fared ill in this encounter. As Schmoller
pointed out, those whom he attacked had spent more years in the study of
economic questions than he had weeks.
But one of the most interesting features of this new school of political
economy, altogether apart from the correctness of its other doctrines,
is its repudiation of selfishness, or self-interest, as it is more
euphemistically called, as a sufficient guide in economic matters. The
necessity of Christian self-denial and self-sacrifice is emphasized by
its adherents. They attack what they call the mammonism of the Manchester
school, and elevate man, not wealth, to the central position in economic
science. “The starting-point, as well as the object-point, of our science
is man” (Roscher). All hope of resolving “the social question” without a
moral and intellectual elevation of mankind is abandoned. The Christian
religion is assigned an important work in this field, and political
economy becomes a Christian science. To see the leaders of economic
thought, starting with anything rather than religious predilections,
gradually forced to this position, may indeed be styled a triumph of
Christianity.